If you don’t own a Kindle you can read this book on your iPad or Mac via Amazon’s free Kindle Cloud Reader – or on your desktop or laptop via Kindle for PC software.

Digital option #2 is a PDF – also priced at $4.99. Formatted to save paper, it’s 123 standard, printer-sized pages (the last 20 of which are footnotes). Delivered instantly, it avoids shipping costs and is a comfortable, pleasant read.

A 250-page paperback edition priced at $20 should be available by the end of next week from Amazon.com – which ships internationally.

Definitely the best book to date on the politics of climate science.
*Many “lead authors” were grad students with no published science.
*Dozens of contributors and authors had previously signed up as WWF activists.
*Some chapters were mainly activist “grey” literature.

I can’t see how the IPCC can survive this forensic scrutiny of its practices.

Read the Amazon preview. UN Gender and Diversity criteria when selecting people for positions! as Donna says, perfectly ok if the IPCC is a training field, but not when it is supposed to produce the best scientific report possible. It is astonishing that the Media were so incompetent through all these years that they have let the UN get away with even bigger incompetence. Oh, wait, I don’t know who’s more incompetent… nevermind…

I have only been able to read excerpts so far, but I will be buying it.

The book appears to be a marvellous compendium of facts, figures and fictions relating to the machinations and operations of the IPCC. Having so much information in one place is extremely useful.

But, (and not taking anything away from this) didn’t we already know much, if not most, of this?
So statements such as “I can’t see how the IPCC can survive this forensic scrutiny of its practices” seem to me to be optimistic.

The IPCC has already survived and survived.

In that regard it is very like some doomsday cult which, improbably and in the very face of all contrary rational consideration, has survived it’s own postulated ‘day of doom’.

The IPCC is one part of the planet which most decidedly is not under any sort of threat from global warming!

I don’t think your analysis, Squarehead, has anything to do with Donna’s. Being Canadian, I doubt that the US position in the UN is of much interest to her at all. If it’s your opinion, make it clear that it’s your opinion, and don’t pretend it’s anyone else’s.

Archonix, perhaps you didn’t notice that I said : “The book appears to be a marvellous compendium of facts, figures and fictions relating to the machinations and operations of the IPCC. Having so much information in one place is extremely useful.”

It is quite devastating. In isolation the points made in each of the first seven chapters could be overlooked, but taken together they are inexcusable. This deserves to be very widely read – by the general public. Well Done Donna!

Amazing that it has taken decades for this kind of basic checking of credentials to be done. It’s clear that not only science, but anything that purports to be a “news” organization has lost the right to be considered a an objective source of information through this ongoing charade.

I don’t think your analysis, Squarehead, has anything to do with Donna’s. Being Canadian, I doubt that the US position in the UN is of much interest to her at all. If it’s your opinion, make it clear that it’s your opinion, and don’t pretend it’s anyone else’s.

Actually, I wrote my book first. Donna could have easily copied it and expanded it to 123 pages! Mine was short enough that I could post it here in its entirety, sans the footnotes.

I’m sure Donna has no more desire to be a Canadian-UN slave than I want to be a US-UN slave.

Donna’s book (downloaded this morning) is a remarkable piece of calm, professional, investigative journalism: a valuable source of evidence that counters repeated claims that the IPCC must be regarded as the ultimate authority on climate change.

But one thing troubles me. She mentions (several times) a subject about which I know a lot: the millennium date change problem – or Y2K. And here her research was plainly inadequate: she is fully signed up to the established but false notion that it was another exaggerated scare. (A view shared by another of my heroes, Matt Ridley.) But the much-maligned “experts” didn’t get Y2K wrong. They issued warnings (not predictions) – people listened and did what was necessary to fix a real and seriously worrying problem. We should be glad that they did.

The book reiterates much of an article – “The Y2K Scare, the Media & Climate Change” – published on her blog in August. To my email expressing concern, she replied with the (reasonable enough) challenge that:

“Anyone who wants to change my mind is going to have to supply a great deal of supporting documentation – lots of direct links and lots of examples. Such a person will have to build a very convincing case.”

BTW a journalist who agrees with my analysis advised me last week that I shouldn’t have any illusions: once the establishment, the media and leading commentators have made up their minds about something (e.g. that Y2K was an over hyped scare story) there is nothing, no matter how cogent the argument or clear-cut the evidence, that can change their collective mind. It’s settled and that’s it. Sound familiar?

I suggest Donna has missed the essential point: yes, there’s a parallel between Y2K and AGW but it’s the opposite of the one she’s drawn – the real point is that, just as the commentariat is completely wrong about Y2K, so it’s completely wrong about AGW.

PS: she makes an amusing (to me) date change error in the book. She refers (location 3106) to “a 2003 column” written by a computer consultant. It was written in 1993.

I hope that Donna’s book becomes a best seller and that she gets some interviews on national TV. In addition, I hope that the book is made into a movie starring Seth Green as Michael Mann and as Kevin Trenberth. (If these two are not in the book, poetic license and justice will put them in the movie.)

Squarehead: You omitted a description of the voting membership of the U.N. A democratic process is undermined by anti-democratic members.

Democracy is another word for totalitarian rule by public opinion, by the mob. Literally. Once it is in place, it is only a matter of time before the rule is concentrated into the instigators’ hands.

But we’re more interested in the micro-mismanagement of the IPCC group, not the high level policies.

Trees are more interesting than forests?

A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

It is not possible for the IPCC to clean up its act. It is filthy, rotten, and perverse to the core, as its master, the United Nations, is. When it opens its mouth, it is not to bless, it is to deceive, to lie, to sin. It cannot cease from sin.

Robin Guenier says:
October 14, 2011 at 2:11 pm
“But one thing troubles me. She mentions (several times) a subject about which I know a lot: the millennium date change problem – or Y2K. And here her research was plainly inadequate: she is fully signed up to the established but false notion that it was another exaggerated scare. ”

Y2K was completely blown out of proportion by the media. I, like probably every other professional programmer, got the order to check our product at the time for possible problems and run tests so that our customers could be assured that nothing bad would happen. We did so. No fix was necessary.

At the same time, reports appeared of people building hideouts in the mountains, expecting the end of days. I don’t say that many such people existed but the media used such stories to fill their pages. Some market gurus expected a serious crash. You always have Cassandras, and you always have the media blowing it out of proportion. It was the scare du jour, much like CAGW was in 2007, and the debt crisis is now.

More Soylent Green! says:
October 14, 2011 at 2:05 pm
I can’t find the preview at Amazon.com. Did I miss it, or is it gone?

There should be a box at the right side of the page labeled “send sample now”. You have to log in to Amazon first and when the download page comes up select the cloud reader format if you don’t have a Kindle or similar device and want to read it on a desktop or laptop.

Robin Guenier says:
October 14, 2011 at 2:11 pm
“But one thing troubles me. She mentions (several times) a subject about which I know a lot: the millennium date change problem – or Y2K.
……..
Y2K was completely blown out of proportion by the media.
================================================================
To some extent, yes. But that’s what they do. However, …
I was one of a small team that spent 1-2 years fixing an essential financial system for a *very* large international, erm, computer corp. If that hadn’t been done, on Jan 1 2000 the brown stuff would have left the fan and coated the walls to a depth of several feet.
Probably hundreds of thousands of hours were spent on sorting out badly-designed business systems around the world. (It was boom time for us softies) That the Y2K effect was minimal was a result of that effort.

Donna L says, ” [ . . . ] After more than two years of research, I’m firmly in the climate skeptic camp. After all, journalists are supposed to be skeptical. They aren’t supposed to take anyone’s word for anything. They’re supposed to dig, and question, and challenge.”

I think people like FlyingOrc need to understand the meme of the book. The human mind is at it’s peak in the early twenties and young scientists, for example Einstein, often make their key discoveries early in their careers. These young people are also prone to be passionate and believe in their causes. Older people tend to be somewhat the opposite, and I can attest to this, becoming somewhat curmudeonly and stupid as I age. I’m sure this book will be a marketing success if it is targeted to the correct audience, but I regret to say that my mind has not yet decayed sufficiently so that I can be part of that emeritous cohort.

Robin Guenier says:
October 14, 2011 at 2:11 pm
“But one thing troubles me. She mentions (several times) a subject about which I know a lot: the millennium date change problem – or Y2K. And here her research was plainly inadequate: she is fully signed up to the established but false notion that it was another exaggerated scare. ”

Y2K was completely blown out of proportion by the media. I, like probably every other professional programmer, got the order to check our product at the time for possible problems and run tests so that our customers could be assured that nothing bad would happen. We did so. No fix was necessary.

Ha. I can do that one better. I was a BIOS programmer at Dell computer from 1993-2000. I actually coded the fix for about 50 million computers circa 1998. Everyone knew how overblown it was. But it was also the biggest sales tool in the history of personal computers and I go back to the 1970’s working either with, for, or around Intel and Microsoft. I bought Dell stock like crazy up until 1998 then started selling it while the artificial replacement craze lasted. In January 2000 shortly after nothing happened and I knew that hundreds of millions of perfectly functional computers were replaced 2-3 years early I handed in my resignation and cashed in all my chips knowing full well the industry was going to see some hard times for the next few years while the early replacement cycle worked its way out of the system. Good times.

she is fully signed up to the established but false notion that it was another exaggerated scare. (A view shared by another of my heroes, Matt Ridley.) But the much-maligned “experts” didn’t get Y2K wrong. They issued warnings (not predictions)

It was exaggerated. If you look at the money spent by country, you will find there was no relationship between the amount spent and Y2K problems encountered. France for example spent very little, yet encountered few problems.

Having said that, Y2K was a real problem, albeit exaggerated. There is no evidence CAGW is a real problem.

You can’t fix the IPCC. Instead, you must fold, spindle and mutilate the IPCC until its plaintive cries annoy you and you finally grind your heel into its malformed hockey stick skull to obliterate the last spark of life from it and it dies with a satisfying hiss and a rattle…

Squarehead, you may not agree with Donna’s analysis, but I certainly agree with your position; I’m pretty sure I thought this way before you did, in fact!:] The IPCC and the UN are taking us 4000 miles down a bad road.

I think people like FlyingOrc need to understand the meme of the book. The human mind is at it’s peak in the early twenties and young scientists, for example Einstein, often make their key discoveries early in their careers. These young people are also prone to be passionate and believe in their causes. Older people tend to be somewhat the opposite, and I can attest to this, becoming somewhat curmudeonly and stupid as I age. I’m sure this book will be a marketing success if it is targeted to the correct audience, but I regret to say that my mind has not yet decayed sufficiently so that I can be part of that emeritous cohort.
===================================================================

The human mind is at its peak in the early twenties?…… yeh, ok, whatever….
But, even if that were true, you still forgot a couple of things Mike, young people also are brash and prone to mistakes. Many at that age haven’t learned to accept their mistakes, so their prone to reject legitimate criticism. Neither do they have life experience to call upon when in conundrums. Even more importantly, the IPCC isn’t a forum for scientific discovery….. it is suppose to be an assessment. There isn’t any excuse to put people in such a role when to that date their greatest achievement was overcoming acne.

(mumbling ….greatest scientific minds…….phhhttt.) No wonder laymen can easily discredit their work. We’ve been arguing with mental and emotional children….. as if we didn’t know that already.

Donna L. says, “The global warming debate is a strange one. I can’t think of any other topic in which people go around declaring that ‘the debate is over.’ Where – and when, precisely – did this bona fide debate take place? How was the winner decided? Who made that call – and on what grounds?”

“I was one of a small team that spent 1-2 years fixing an essential financial system for a *very* large international, erm, computer corp. If that hadn’t been done, on Jan 1 2000 the brown stuff would have left the fan and coated the walls to a depth of several feet.
Probably hundreds of thousands of hours were spent on sorting out badly-designed business systems around the world. (It was boom time for us softies) That the Y2K effect was minimal was a result of that effort.”

Millions of hours go into every new release of Microsoft Windows. Hundreds of thousands of hours are nothing. The thing of it is that it was very very easy to test for what would happen on the rollover date by isolating the system under test and set the clock forward to the rollover date. It’s a pretty slothful programmer who didn’t bother using 4 digits to represent the year in his code, there wasn’t much of that sloth out there, and what problems that existed were easily identified. This was the most anticipated and proactively fixed non-problem in the history of computing.

Now, as I recall, 2038 is the real date to get scared about because that’s when the number of seconds since January 1st, 1970 exceeds the maximum value of a signed 32-bit integer. This measure of time used in computers is truly ubiquitous and not at all easy to fix. But it’s still over 25 years away so nothing to sweat about quite yet.

Dave Springer says:
October 14, 2011 at 3:34 pm
I was a BIOS programmer at Dell computer from 1993-2000. I actually coded the fix for about 50 million computers circa 1998. Everyone knew how overblown it was.

And, what would have happened if you hadn’t written that code in advance?

I agree that much of the scare scenarios where overblown, but this doesn’t change the fact that if no one reacted to the problem in advance, it would have caused a lot of difficulty for a lot of organizations.

“Rude in what way? It seems to be ok when the mods do it. And if you think this kind of error is occasional, you haven’t been paying attention.”
========
Why are you here?.
You have your own blog, which appears to draw no traffic.
Your “comments” here add nothing to the conversation, and appear to be aimed towards embarrassing your host.
I suggest you Google “social graces”, as you seem to have none.

Donna L. says, “In my mind’s eye I am addressing an audience of ordinary citizens and the questions under discussion are: What is the IPCC? and Can it be trusted? I’ve marshaled my evidence and ordered my argument in the way that seemed to me to have the greatest chance of persuading a reasonable person with an open mind that this organization wields an inappropriate level of influence over our lives – and that it has a credibility score of zero.)”

“Now, as I recall, 2038 is the real date to get scared about because that’s when the number of seconds since January 1st, 1970 exceeds the maximum value of a signed 32-bit integer.”
I calculate a span of 136 years worth of seconds fitting into a 32 bit memory space.
Also the software development environment I use have milliseconds as the smallest units, reducing the maximum time span by 1000.

I wonder if the next IPCC report might be subject to some, ummm… delay, due to, uhh, technical reasons, that result in publication being, uhhh, suspended, uhhh, briefly, while, uhhh important technical considerations are … evaluated.

Honestly, I think if the IPCC just go ahead and release another one o’ the usual piles after this, it’s going to be treated as a worldwide joke.

Donna has been blogging about this subject for quite some time, in separated posts. Just reading the sample shows she has put this together in a very coherent and readable fashion, connecting the dots, as it were. I need more, I am downloading it tonight.

Dave Springer says:
October 14, 2011 at 4:03 pm
It’s a pretty slothful programmer who didn’t bother using 4 digits to represent the year in his code, there wasn’t much of that sloth out there, and what problems that existed were easily identified.

We used 2 digits for the year for a very simple reason. Back in the early 70’s when I started coding we had lots of dates to store and both memory and storage was in short supply. We all knew it was a problem to use two digit years, but we all assumed that our code would never last 30 years. However, many early programs proved useful and were added to and added to, until they became legacy systems that were still going strong in 2000. Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.

MikeA says:
October 14, 2011 at 3:31 pm
young scientists, for example Einstein, often make their key discoveries early in their careers.

Makes sense because they have nothing to lose by suggesting something outrageous. On occasion they are right, but most often not. The Precautionary Principle say you should never believe them, because most of the time they are wrong. The Precautionary Principle also says that Columbus should never have sailed for India. That Jenner should never have injected a boy with cow pox. Yet the world says this about Jenner: “saved more lives than the work of any other man”.

The hype on Y2K was so far over the top, it seems impossible when we look back on it. I had people who SHOULD know better telling me that cars wouldn’t start, cable descramblers would freeze, telephone relays and internet switches and cell phone towers would stop. I found myself many times asking where you set the Year on your car’s engine controller…

Yes, there was an issue. As ferd says, nobody writing code in the 70s and 80s actually believed it would still be in use, because everything was being changed and updated so frequently. Besides, worst case you could just continue using the two digit years and add 100. I had some nice maintenance contracts in the late 90s, one was for a pharmacy system from the early 80s that was still being used in 1999, written in compiled BASIC on DOS, and they had lost the source code some years previously. They hired a team of programmers to completely rewrite the system for Windows in 1996 and barely got it done in time.

Almost everyone I know involved in IT was rolling in dough back then, and a huge amount of that money came straight from governments. There is obviously a plus side: more coders think farther ahead now. It’s a lot easier to get a company to spend more on testing.

I’m very concerned about the looming Y10K problem, and the less anticipated but potentially horrific Y32768 issue. We should immediately begin “tackling” these “challenging” issues, and reduce our code output to pre-1990 levels to “mitigate” these coming disasters…

“Now, as I recall, 2038 is the real date to get scared about because that’s when the number of seconds since January 1st, 1970 exceeds the maximum value of a signed 32-bit integer.”
I calculate a span of 136 years worth of seconds fitting into a 32 bit memory space.

Only for an unsigned integer. For signed integers, the max is 68 years.

I calculate a span of 136 years worth of seconds fitting into a 32 bit memory space.

Using an unsigned int, yes, but time_t is a signed integer to allow for manipulation of dates prior to 1970. That also rules out converting to an unsigned int.

64 bit systems will, of course, not have quite the same problem, as a 64 bit int is large enough to keep counting about 20 times longer than the assumed lifetime of the universe. 32 bit programmes running on 64 bit systems will have problems but that’s relatively easily solved by recompiling (assuming you have access to the code). The real problem is embedded and legacy 32 bit systems that can’t be upgraded, or software that relies on time_t being a 32 bit signed int for whatever reason.

Why are you here?.
You have your own blog, which appears to draw no traffic.
Your “comments” here add nothing to the conversation, and appear to be aimed towards embarrassing your host.
I suggest you Google “social graces”, as you seem to have none.

I’m here because I want to learn. Why are you here?
Whether or not I have my own blog is irrelevant.

I have no social graces because I’ve been trying to point out to Anthony that he’s making a very basic mistake in grammar? How’s that? Again, it seems to be ok when mods do it to commenters, but not the other way around? I wasn’t trying to embarrass anyone, simply pointing out a fact.

If my comments add nothing to the conversation then neither do yours, in this thread anyway.[NOTE: OK. OK. It’s fixed. Polite suggestions for correction are welcome. Thank you, Jeff. Now, let’s get back to the discussion on the thread. -REP]

“It was exaggerated. If you look at the money spent by country, you will find there was no relationship between the amount spent and Y2K problems encountered. ”

If IT staff don’t do their job and bad things happen, people complain that they ignored a problem.
If IT staff do their job so bad things don’t happen, people complain that they exaggerated a problem.
They just can’t win.

As for 2038, Linux at least seems to have been using 64-bit times for a few years. Windows is screwed by backward compatibility, but so long as Microsoft switched to 64-bit times for 64-bit programs there won’t be many old 32-bit programs running by then.

That said, with the high precision timers available on modern computers some people have been talking about storing times to nanosecond precision, which would mean that 64 bits would run out in a few hundred years.

Donna’s book (downloaded this morning) is a remarkable piece of calm, professional, investigative journalism: a valuable source of evidence that counters repeated claims that the IPCC must be regarded as the ultimate authority on climate change.

But one thing troubles me. She mentions (several times) a subject about which I know a lot: the millennium date change problem – or Y2K. And here her research was plainly inadequate: she is fully signed up to the established but false notion that it was another exaggerated scare.

No future-value-of-money calculations on any kind of note into the future?

I would be surprised, highly surprised I say, to find the answer was “no” …

Any concern of ‘embedded controllers’ was moot too (dates might be used for reporting purposes, but not operationally; internal hardware ‘timers’ used for anything require time hash marks/interrupts), and Telco marches pretty much to their own ‘beat’ on account of on-going “Bell System Practices” and that would have included coding concerns (standards) going forward …

Is it just a coincidence that “The Delinquent Teenager” illustrated on the cover of the book looks like I imagine one Barack H. Obama did back in his “blow” days in Hawaii? Similarly the introduction rings eerily familiar.

This is a must have book. It should put a torpedo in the New World Order battleship IPCC.

[NOTE: OK. OK. It’s fixed. Polite suggestions for correction are welcome. Thank you, Jeff. Now, let’s get back to the discussion on the thread. -REP]

I still don’t see how I was impolite, but thanks for fixing it.

On-topic, I look forward to buying this book when I get my Kindle Fire for Xmas ;)

[REPLY: No, Jeff, I did not mean to imply that you were impolite… although pedantics like us can sometimes appear that way to people who place a higher value on tact than correct grammar. Just keep in mind that Anthony does a lot of this stuff on the fly, juggling a family and business as well as researching tons of climate, weather, and science related stuff. He multi-tasks with a vengeance. -REP]

Y2K wasn’t about Excel spreadsheets, it was primarily about the big iron that does the work behind the scenes running software written decades ago when storage was expensive and everyone knew their crappy COBOL code would be replaced well before 2000 so there was no point worrying about whether it would continue to work. I remember reading about several major issues with such systems that had to be fixed, particularly, if I remember correctly, in inter-bank messaging using two-digit dates.

“Any concern of ‘embedded controllers’ was moot too (dates might be used for reporting purposes, but not operationally; internal hardware ‘timers’ used for anything require time hash marks/interrupts)”

Never underestimate the stupidity of programmers, or the lack of processing, storage and communications capacity of old hardware.

Again, it’s more than ten years since this mattered so I’ve forgotten the details, but I remember reading about a railway signalling system which simply didn’t work when the year was 00 because someone had decided that a year of 00 was the way they’d report an error. Fortunately Y2K caused someone to look at the system and they discovered and fixed the problem before it stopped working on January 1st.

Anyway, this is getting off-topic, other than to point out that comparing Y2K to CAGW is a great disservice to the people who spent a lot of time ensuring that bad things didn’t happen.

Here is the skinny on a Windows XP service pack 3 or newer system with regards to the System.DateTime:
“The DateTime value type represents dates and times with values ranging from 12:00:00 midnight, January 1, 0001 Anno Domini (Common Era) through 11:59:59 P.M., December 31, 9999 A.D. (C.E.).

Time values are measured in 100-nanosecond units called ticks, and a particular date is the number of ticks since 12:00 midnight, January 1, 0001 A.D. (C.E.) in the GregorianCalendar calendar (excluding ticks that would be added by leap seconds). For example, a ticks value of 31241376000000000L represents the date, Friday, January 01, 0100 12:00:00 midnight. A DateTime value is always expressed in the context of an explicit or default calendar.”

14 Oct: Forbes: William Pentland: The Post-Normal Seduction of Climate Science
Now, the climate-science community is scrambling to crack the code on the “uncertainty” conundrum. Exhibit A: the October 2011 issue of the journal Climatic Change, the closest thing in climate science to gospel truth, which is devoted entirely to the subject of uncertainty.
While I have yet to digest all of the dozen or so essays, I suspect they are only the opening salvo in what is will soon become a robust debate about the significance of uncertainty in climate-change science. The first item up on the chopping block is called post-normal science (PNS)…
While it pains me to admit this, I am increasingly convinced that the IPCC’s role in assessing the science of climate change needs to be scaled back. The IPCC was an overly optimistic experiment in international governance designed for a world that never materialized… http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/10/14/the-post-normal-seduction-of-climate-science/

Thanks so much for posting this Anthony.
Fantastic Donna. Thank you for doing the rigorous work and putting pen to paper.
Congratulations.
Just downloaded and will enjoy reading your work this weekend.

Thanks for fixing it. While I am astounded at the quantity and quality of Anthony’s (and other contributor’s) output, I have to agree with Jeff. If we’re supposed to be able to accept corrections of our science, we should also accept corrections in our grammar. And being the leadoff line….

Regarding Y2K: “It was exaggerated. If you look at the money spent by country, you will find there was no relationship between the amount spent and Y2K problems encountered. ” I respectfully disagree that it was exaggerated. And the REAL question should be: What was the relationship between the amount spent and Y2K problems averted? We’ll never know.

I can’t read the preview at Amazon with Firefox or Opera. There is some Javascript problem, and yes I do have Java enabled.
Would some kind person be able to post the preview in plain text somewhere. Here would be a good place.

MarkG says that references to Y2K are off topic. Unfortunately, they’re not: Donna adopts a tone of objective rationality – looking at the evidence as it really is, not as “interpreted” by others. And it does seem that she has done that in this book – I certainly hope so. But, unfortunately, there’s a flaw: by characterising Y2K as no more than an exaggerated scare and thereby drawing a parallel with CAGW, she fails to meet her own high standard. I suggest that anyone who disagrees should read my paper: http://qii2.info/y2k.pdf.

Dave Springer says:
October 14, 2011 at 3:34 pm
I was a BIOS programmer at Dell computer from 1993-2000. I actually coded the fix for about 50 million computers circa 1998. Everyone knew how overblown it was.
———————
Y2K made me a very rich man back in the nineties. Most programmers back then knew it was bogus, but why tell that when companies were willing to pay up to three times our normal consulting rates for fixing it. Maybe I am beginning to understand why climate scientists react as they do.

I read this in one sitting. It is very good in the sense that it should convince laypeople that the IPCC has mislead us all. After reading the book even a layperson will be left with absolutely no doubt that a SCAM has been perpetrated. There is no science in this book and this is probably a good thing as the science about global temperatures 100 years into the future is nothing but idle pointless speculation anyway.

The only thing missing is a deeper exploration of motives – clearly the desire for power at the UN is one theme she explores and the kudos given to young graduates is another, but Donna neither examines the money trail linking NGOs, like the WWF, and their funding to the UN, nor the linkages between alarmist papers and increases in government funding for academic research (although this subject is mentioned by one scientist she quotes).

The writing seems a little unsophisticated at first (yada, yada?) but don’t let the messy plate keep you from enjoying each and every delicious tidbit. It tightens up as she goes on. I’m half way through and astonished at all the information she brings, including names, dates and clear analysis! $4.99? A Bargain!

I just one-clicked the Kindle version and am looking forward with great anticipation digging into it tonight or tomorrow.

As for the Y2K sub-plot here, as a professional software developer and data wrangler for about 40 years now, I see both sides are more-or-less correct. Yes, the consequences were hyped and overblown. And Yes, there would have been quite unpleasant and extremely expensive consequences had not very large efforts been undertaken to check for and correct bad software before the 1 changed to that pesky 2. Unfortunately for me, the lion’s share of the software I’ve been personally involved in creating has been in SAS which, thanks to excellent foresight, handles dates intelligently and won’t run into difficulties until the year 9,007,199,254,740,939. Some of my colleagues – especially COBOL-literate programmers – made out quite nicely doing contract work during the late 90s, but I missed out on the Big Buck$ digging into all that old code.

Do read this: http://qii2.info/y2k.pdf. Do you have any examples of no serious problems occurring where no Y2K was done where it mattered: i.e. on big “legacy” systems employed in large (e.g. financial) organisations? There may have been some (where two-digit dates had not be used) – but they were few.

Jeff Alberts says:Rude in what way? It seems to be ok when the mods do it. And if you think this kind of error is occasional, you haven’t been paying attention.

Jeff – please take it from me, correcting someone’s speech is just rude. Doing it in public is doubly rude. And doing it as if talking to an exasperating child (“*sigh*”) is triply rude. And it’s all made even ruder still if you are there as a guest of the person whose speech you are correcting.

It’s like accepting an invitation to dinner from someone and then, in front of the other guests, correcting their table manners.

My suggestion is to relax and live with these little things. But if a minor grammatical error really bothers you, you can always bring it to their attention offline – no need to rub their nose in it in public. It’s a great credit to Anthony and the mods how they react graciously to comments such as yours.

@ Martin A (2011/10/15 at 1:46 am) & Jeff Alberts – re Rude in what way?
Martin – I agree.
Jeff – Anthony and the moderators are very grateful to people who point out specific errors – so that they can be corrected easily. Blog posts are often written during the day at WUWT while Anthony is juggling running his company – errors happen in haste to all of us and not just due to to ignorance of grammar (if that was your intended criticism). I find to my horror that I sometimes write the wrong article or spelling of a homonym when I am in a hurry.

Your manner in pointing out the error reflects more badly on you than the person you are criticising.

Interesting how Y2K seems to have hijacked this thread. I have read Donna’s book and thought it was about how Greenpeace, the WWF, and a few other zealots (and con artists) have dominated the AGW issue. AGW would appear to be a combination of massive scam and widespread naive eagerness to join together to save the world.

In the meantime what terrible harm has been done by diverting money to the scam? How many people have suffered, perhaps died, because we have had our focus diverted from more real and immediate problems?

So far I have just bought the Kindle version of her book. I look forward to buying a dozen or more when the paper version is available on Amazon and giving them to my more naive friends.

In the end (assuming there is an end) I believe that Steve McIntyre, Dr. McKitrick, Drs. Roger Pielke (Senior and Junior), Anthony Watts, and now Donna Laframboise will be shown to be the heros in the sordid episode. There are many others that have fought the good fight and I apologize that I have neglected them in this early morning post.

I just finished the book on my Kindle. It’s very well written and well-armored against counterthrusts. The author writes, (in Acknowledgments, 74% of the way through the book, at Kindle location 2586) the following:

“… the focus and content of this book is highly strategic. This is not a catalog of every bad thing the IPCC has ever done. … I have chosen my examples with care, selecting ones I thought might be easily digested by the average person who knows little about the climate debate.”

I hope Donna (or someone) will produce a follow-up document containing “the rest of the story” for us buffs.

“Dave Springer says:
October 14, 2011 at 3:34 pm
I was a BIOS programmer at Dell computer from 1993-2000. I actually coded the fix for about 50 million computers circa 1998. Everyone knew how overblown it was.”

Well I worked for a large corporation as a cobol programmer back in the 70’s&80’s using IMS databases and an IT manager after and by the mid 90’s there was 3 decades worth of embedded Y2K problems in company’s backbone application code. Believe me the problem was very real and in the case of heritage mainframe systems very complex and labour intensive to fix. It wasn’t just things like using 9’s records in date fields and database keys to indicate the end of a file, but tests were hard coded in the cobol code which wouldn’t work after 1998 let alone 2000. All code had to be manually reviewed and what might be relatively simple changes in the object oriented, encapsulated world of modern programming were a labour intensive grind to fix in these older procedural systems.

The origins of the programming issues went back to when core memory was very expensive and using YY instead of YYYY on date fields was worth money and the industry wisdom was that the old code wouldn’t still be running in 2000.

“Well I worked for a large corporation as a cobol programmer back in the 70′s&80′s using IMS databases and an IT manager after and by the mid 90′s there was 3 decades worth of embedded Y2K problems in company’s backbone application code. Believe me the problem was very real and in the case of heritage mainframe systems very complex and labour intensive to fix.”

I didn’t say the problem wasn’t real. The inability to deal with it well enough to avoid catastrophic consequences was demonstrably overblown given that no catastophe occurred. There were a great number of people who truly believed modern civilization was going to come to grinding halt because of it.

I’m sure it was quite tedious in some legacy code written in dated procedural languagues by programmers who have long since moved on, retired, or died. It remains however that it was the most anticipated and easily tested problems in computing history. Knowing you have a problem, knowing exactly what the problem is, and being able to duplicate & test comprises most of the battle in debugging.

The hysteria surrounding it and thus money directed at it turned it into a gold mine for a lot of people and those people had little inclination to still the hysteria since that would be like strangling the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs.

Robin Guenier says:
October 14, 2011 at 9:59 pm
MarkG says that references to Y2K are off topic. Unfortunately, they’re not: Donna adopts a tone of objective rationality – looking at the evidence as it really is, not as “interpreted” by others. And it does seem that she has done that in this book – I certainly hope so. But, unfortunately, there’s a flaw: by characterising Y2K as no more than an exaggerated scare and thereby drawing a parallel with CAGW, she fails to meet her own high standard. I suggest that anyone who disagrees should read my paper: http://qii2.info/y2k.pdf.

I agree with both points: while over-hyped, the Y2K problem needed attention and Donna Laframboise should not have linked Y2K and CAGW the way she does.

I hope taht after Donna makes a reasonable amount of money from the book that she reduces the price or makes it open source aso that we can pass it on freely. I don’t mind buying a copy but I’d love to be able to give 10 copies to friends (and enemies)

Robin Guenier: The year 2000 was not the first year of the new millennium, it was the last year of the old. Centuries end in years that end in “00”, millennia end in years that end in “000”. The BBC propagated the error that 1999 was the last year of the 20th century.

The inability to deal with it well enough to avoid catastrophic consequences was demonstrably overblown given that no catastophe occurred.”

I absolutely agree with you on this but that is not how it gets presented when coupled with CAGW. The usual theme is that “nothing went badly wrong because of the Y2K as it was a scam, so why should CAGW be a problem?”

The analysis of Y2K was empirical and tangible and appropriate action taken despite the profiteering scam that happened. Looking at computer models that predict CAGW is entirely different because the underlying rules are not adequately understood let alone programmed into the models.

So with Y2K, some folk panicked because they weren’t aware of what was actually being done to rectify the known problems, whereas CAGW is presented as panic despite no one adequately understanding the way climate works but the nurturing of such panic still benefits the profiteers.

Just finished the book – the time flew by. Donna has really joined up all the dots to reveal the full mendacity of the IPCC, which is simply unbelievable. It’s eminently readable even for someone who isn’t the least familiar with the topic. It deserves to go viral. I hope Delingpole picks up on this and does a piece on it.

MikeA says:
October 14, 2011 at 3:31 pm
I think people like FlyingOrc need to understand the meme of the book. The human mind is at it’s peak in the early twenties and young scientists, for example Einstein, often make their key discoveries early in their careers. These young people are also prone to be passionate and believe in their causes. Older people tend to be somewhat the opposite, and I can attest to this, becoming somewhat curmudeonly and stupid as I age. I’m sure this book will be a marketing success if it is targeted to the correct audience, but I regret to say that my mind has not yet decayed sufficiently so that I can be part of that emeritous cohort.

As I am now suffering from late early onset advanced middle age, I can say that I am less passionate, less energetic, more cynical and more methodical than I was in my 20’s. I’m also now know I don’t know the answer to everything, that the gloom-and-doom hysteria over the current world crisis is more likely to be just the flavor of the month than a real problem. My brain is less agile than if was, but while I am becoming slightly curmudgeon, I’m definitely not getting stupider.

I am in the middle of Dona Laframboise’s new book. It is making my weekend.

In her book Donna has a comprehensive perspective regarding the non-transparent handling by IPCC’s Susan Solomon (AR4’s Chair of WG1) of a request by expert reviewer Steven McIntrye for SI on two as-of-then-unpublished papers being considered for inclusion in AR4.

Donna L. said, “Here’s how Solomon could have convinced me that the IPCC is an honorable organization: She could have rebuked the authors of these two papers and then issued an IPCC-wide memo announcing that she had done so. She could have declared that refusing to share one’s data amounts to scientific malpractice and that the IPCC would no longer pay attention to research produced by people who behave in this manner. She could have instructed the technical support units to lend every assistance to expert reviewers seeking additional information – inviting anyone who encountered difficulties in that regard to contact her directly.

When the IPCC wonders why people don’t trust it, it need look no further than the fact that nothing remotely like this occurred.”

My hat off to Donna L; her view looks like appropriately skeptical professional journalism to me. Donna titled that chapter “Clear as Mud” and I can see why she chose Susan Solomon’s muddiness as an IPCC leader as a key element of the chapter.

“They” are surely convinced they are improving humanity, they are surely convinced that they are the saviors of the human kind, and as a proof of this is the apparently progress attained in several of the former developing countries and the widening of commerce and welfare….however has it been really so?
We renounce our personal freedom, even to my personal and free poverty, in order to get what? A marvelous existence, as the workmen in the chinese Ipad factory, a twelve hours workshift in order to enjoy a fabulous salary of 300 a month, in a small room without windows?
Does this not seem, instead, the “joy” of the “gamma class” in a “Brave New World”?
What is it more “ecological”?
It seems more that their real purpose is just “optimizing” sales, markets and profit of the self-chosen “Alpha” elite?
The former kingdoms and local aristocracies were not so voracious. They identified themselves with their people, and the people identified themselves with their lords. It was an almost personal relation. We have read remembrances of those times in old tales from every country around the world.
Of course there were good times, when everything flourished, during “solar maxima” and bad times, during “solar minima”. At every “turn of the screw” things, order changed.
We are about a new change, a new turn of an evolving spiral; it will be up to us to keep our human condition or to surrender it in exchange for a bulk of printed paper of doubtful value.

Would someone who knows, please supply a phonetic spelling of “Laframboise“, and while you’re at it, a phonetic spelling of “Tiljander“. If her name comes up in a conversation, I want to use the correct pronunciation.

I’ve read it. The IPCC must be abolished, vanquished to to the town square stocks for public shaming. Perhaps somewhere down the line, this book will prove to be its undoing. The potential is certainly there. Some rather vain quibbles about Y2K to one side, this book contains more than enough stunning revelations to turn the sailed IPCC ship of public opinion around. The importance of Donna’s work – and I know it took many months – cannot be overstated. Would that other professional journalists have worked so hard on what could have been the story of their professional careers. Well, you’ve been beat. Congratulations, Donna!

The following comment from Bishop Hill is the best review that I have seen and thought that I would cross post it here.

“The point DlaF is making relates to the alarmist habit of claiming that because the IPCC sayts something it must be true. I’m paraphrasing, but not very grossly and I’m sure you’re familiar with the argument.

The technical name for this argument is the argument from authority, whereby one asserts that because so-and-so is an authority, something they say is true. It is akin to the doctrine of papal infallibility.

What DlaF is demonstrating is that the IPCC is not an authority at all. It claims to be, but is not. It is staffed by non-experts lacking significant qualifications, and by political activists, notably from the WWF, FotE and Greenpeace.

Any claim that it is authoritative thus fails twice over – once because argument from authority is spurious anyway and again because it isn’t even an authority.

This differs from an ad hominem attack because it goes precisely to the argument made for the IPCC. An ad hominem would be to say that William Connolley has a stupid pony tail and thus nothing he says should be believed. Thyat’s not what’s being said. What’s being said is that he and others of his ilk are not scientists but activists and that their work is politically tainted and unreliable, not the neutral source of wisdom often claimed.

It does not follow that Ross McKitrick can be dismissed in the same way because he’s a fellow at wherever. The strength of MacIntyre and McKitrick’s arguments comes not from who they are. Nobody says we should all believe McIntyre because he’s an engineer. What people say is that we should believe him because of what he reasons, what he says and the transparent way in which he concludes what he does.

When you understand this point then you may be better able to engage with Donna’s argument.
Oct 15, 2011 at 7:02 PM | Unregistered CommenterJustice4Rinka”

Martin A says:
October 15, 2011 at 1:46 am
Jeff Alberts says:Rude in what way? It seems to be ok when the mods do it. And if you think this kind of error is occasional, you haven’t been paying attention.

Jeff – please take it from me, correcting someone’s speech is just rude. Doing it in public is doubly rude. And doing it as if talking to an exasperating child (“*sigh*”) is triply rude. And it’s all made even ruder still if you are there as a guest of the person whose speech you are correcting.

It’s like accepting an invitation to dinner from someone and then, in front of the other guests, correcting their table manners.

My suggestion is to relax and live with these little things. But if a minor grammatical error really bothers you, you can always bring it to their attention offline – no need to rub their nose in it in public. It’s a great credit to Anthony and the mods how they react graciously to comments such as yours.

I agree there ought to be an offline way of submitting these fixes. (Maybe the mods could forward such comments and not post them online? Or maybe there could be separate “Leave a Correction” text box, if WordPress allows such a thing. (But then that would encourage multiple fixes of the same error, since other readers wouldn’t know it had already been submitted. (Unless error-fix comments were posted with only the poster’s handle showing, plus a note saying, “Click to open this typo-fix comment.”) Or there could be a tab atop the site for submitting them.))

In the case here, where only Anthony’s introductory comments were being “fixed” (arguably), there’s not much justification for posting them–an offline procedure would be best.

But, in the case where the thread’s main article is being fixed, I don’t think that such corrections amount to “correcting the host’s table manners.” Such corrections are part of the online peer-review process. The analogy that occurs to me is of alerting someone that his fly is open. It spares him further embarrassment down the road from hostile critics on The Other Side looking for any stick to beat him with. Look at how we’re mocking the author of the paper under discussion in the recent thread, “Our Sustainable Mirth” for his solecisms and misspellings for an example of how that works.

This goes double for any thread-article that might be submitted for publication later–it makes a bad impression on editors if there are obvious unfixed usage errors when it’s submitted, reducing its chances of acceptance.

Suggested pronounciation of “Tiljander” by another Finn: “i” short as in “big”, “j” like a short “y”, “a” like the “u” in “tug”. The “e” is like the “a” in “stay”.The “r” short and pronounced. Simplified: Tilyundar

I hope this helps more than it confuses. Also congratulate you on being able to discuss climate issues with actual live people, and not just in cyberspace like the rest of us;)

Robin Guenier says: ..Y2K… the established but false notion that it was another exaggerated scare.

DirkH says:

View from the Solent says:
I was one of a small team that spent 1-2 years fixing an essential financial system for a *very* large international, erm, computer corp. If that hadn’t been done, on Jan 1 2000 the brown stuff would have left the fan and coated the walls to a depth of several feet…

Dave Springer says:
I actually coded the fix for about 50 million computers circa 1998. Everyone knew how overblown it was. But it was also the biggest sales tool in the history of personal computers…

CodeTech says:
I had people who SHOULD know better telling me that cars wouldn’t start, cable descramblers would freeze…

Anders N says:
Y2K made me a very rich man back in the nineties. Most programmers back then knew it was bogus… Maybe I am beginning to understand why climate scientists react as they do.

Alan Esworthy says:

son of mulder says:
…3 decades worth of embedded Y2K problems in [my] company’s backbone application code… in the case of heritage mainframe systems very complex… and labour intensive… using YY instead of YYYY on date fields was worth money and the industry wisdom was that the old code wouldn’t still be running in 2000.

So many brilliant programmers here on this side theme :) So Y2K like AGW was overblown and people were suckers – but unlike AGW, action did avert real problems.

OK, after reading just part of the sample I decided not to wait for the birth of my Kindle Fire, download the Kindle for PC (free) from Amazon and buy the full version of The Delinquent Teenager.
Now I can not leave it aside, I have to keep on reading.
Again, congratulations Donna, great work!

Personally, I find the style a bit to relaxed. I like it, but I think making it more ‘formal’ and objective would greatly enhance its wider long-term impact. Having said that, my review is:

A very interesting and detailed critique of the IPPC and the terribly flawed processes it uses to draw ever-more strident and alarming conclusions.

It covers the selection process, opaque review processes, use of grey literature, Greenpeace infiltration, and political advocacy in quite a bit of detail. It also examines the reasons why the information on hurricanes, malaria, biodiversity and the ‘Hockey Stick’ graph may not be at all reliable. Beyond that it introduces evidence of lax peer review, incestuous authorships, data fabrication and the invention of reviewer opinions.

This book is a ‘must read’ for anyone who wants to know why the IPCC is not, and should not be, held in high regard, and above all for those who believe it should. Copies should be sent to all politicians involved in any way with the decision making process regarding climate change.

Donna’s Y2K reference may yet teach us something. Wildly overhyped by certain members of the population, it was a “real” problem. Thanks to the guys who fixed it! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it was a lot easier to fix if source code was available than if it wasn’t.

Does that suggest anything about how “source” (both “raw data” and literal source code) should be archived? Not only in “Climate Science”… Quite a while ago, Anthony brought us a story about a guy who had to lovingly restore an “obsolete” video-tape machine in order to salvage footage of the Moon landings. We’re in danger of losing stuff we “know”…

Robin Guenier: The year 2000 was not the first year of the new millennium, it was the last year of the old. Centuries end in years that end in “00″, millennia end in years that end in “000″. The BBC propagated the error that 1999 was the last year of the 20th century.

Fun dispute! Was there a year 0 A.D., and a mirror year 0 B.C.? If so, 1999 was the last year of the 20th. If not, then 2000 was.
AFAIK, no one has ever referred to “0 A.D.” or “0 B.C.” So I agree with you.

Lucy Skywalker says:
October 15, 2011 at 2:47 pm
So Y2K like AGW was overblown and people were suckers – but unlike AGW, action did avert real problems.

Imho there is absolutely NO comparison between Y2K and AGW. The Y2K issue was a known problem. There is no “known” AGW problem. Y2K may have been hyped by the media to the general public but to equate that to the [C]AGW MSM hyping is just wrong.

-The corporate programmers who “benefited” from Y2K were not the ones doing the hyping.
-There were no calls for the government to implement a Change Date and Trade(Tax) scheme to mitigate the problem.
-While governments did spend tax dollars to fix the issue, the vast majority of the final cost was borne by corporations/private enterprise (and that out of their own IT budgets).
-There were no Spencers, Lindzens, or McIntyres out there claiming that the data or its interpretation was wrong and we didn’t need to do anything.
-There were no Gores, Manns, Hansons or Jones hyping the issue while simultaneously trying to undermine any ‘deniers’.
-AFAIK there weren’t any companies that said after it was over that they had wasted the money on mitigation since things didn’t go badly. No, it was BECAUSE they spent the money that things didn’t go badly.

I have downloaded the Book onto our Kindle and am enjoying reading this well researched piece which has good back up links and footnotes. It is also encouraging that the author is an active advocate of free speech because in my country the Greens have called for a media enquiry stating that “news reporting and opinion has become increasingly “blurred” – (especially if News Limited criticises the Greens policies it seems).

The Government will no doubt do all it can to shut down the debate on its introduction of a carbon tax which is planned to come into effect in July 2012. So the quote Donna Laframboise uses from Pulitzer Prize author Archibald MacLeish is just as important to-day as when he wrote:

“Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.”

And just as important when Harry Truman said:

“When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.”

I do not think Mr Truman would have minded if I added “and so is the world”.

Good work Donna. Keep on defending the citadel and opening your mouth and our minds.

The clip says “une framboise”, meaning “a raspberry” (it’s a feminine noun). Also, bear in mind that the stress in the clip is on the first syllable, “fram”. In “Laframboise”, I suspect it is on the third: la-from-BWAZ, though stand to be corrected on that.

Re: Jeremy @ 10.54 am and 12.02 pm, Oct.15th. when he firstly stated that this book was ranked # 319 for overall sales at Amazon Kindle Store, and then reported that it was # 9 overall in Kindle Movers and Shakers (which represents activity over the preceeding 24 hours), and finished by suggesting that it was going viral.

Some 10 hours later I have had a look at Kindle. This book is locatable by typing in the name of the author or the title. When this is done and the book is viewed, details on the books current status shows an Amazon Best Sellers Rank of:

When I went to Best Sellers in Kindle, this book does not appear at # 383 for most popular. When the list of just over 500 titles is sorted by publication date, it does not appear, likewise by customer review, likewise by price. It does not seem to exist on the best sellers list, despite, at the same time, it being stated that it is #383 when viewed independently of the list.

It does not appear on the Movers and Shakers list at all, which seems a remarkable fall from grace.
When the classification is number 2 above, it is displayed as # 2, not # 1 as it is concurrently stated.
When the classification is number 4 above, it is displayed as #2 which is consistent.
When the classification is number 3 above it is displayed as # 26 rather than # 1. It is on the third page.
So this does not appear on general lists as it apparently should, and possibly did previously (if Jeremy got his ranking from the list itself rather than the title details).
Note that in the most general classification, number 3 above, it has been relegated to the pack.
The net effect of the above would seem to be that if the author or the title are not known, or if a potential reader does not have a specific interest in conservation/the environment and/or politics and current affairs, they will be unlikely to encounter this publication. That is, the general reader who may be interested in this but does not actively pursue these topics.
Now, I am completely ignorant about the functioning of Amazon, so it may be that I have misinterpreted their system, although I cannot see how, for example, what is #1 in a classification in one place is displayed at the same time and in the same classification but in a different place on the site as being #26.
Alternatively, there may be something wrong with their site. Or, someone has intentionally done this. One way or another this is less visible than it apparently should be. Since as I say, I am ignorant, if anyone who thinks this is curious and is an issue wants to follow it up hopefully it can be understood.

ML;
Heh. Reminds me — a stellar female curler in Alberta Canada was/is named Laliberte. Anglo pronunciation emphasizes the first syllable: LA-li-bert-ee. The original French is, of course, La Liberté, with emphasis on the last syllable: La Li-ber-TAY (liberty).

Philip Bradley:
You’re dead right: the rational decision was “to replace any major systems that had Y2K issues, starting around 1995″ – although that could cause problems with interactions with third party organisations (see page 12 of my paper). I know that a few major UK corporations did just that (M&S for example), but am unaware that “a large bank” did. Was it in the UK? If so, I’m surprised: we had detailed discussions with the Bank of England which issued serious advice and warnings to all UK clearing banks, but I’m unaware that one such had taken that sensible course. Donna unfairly criticises a fellow-Canadian, Peter de Jager, who issued a severe Y2K warning in 1993 (she says it was 2003 (Location 3107) – amusingly, her own date change error) – but, if most organisations had listened to Peter back then and done what your bank did, the problem would not have been so serious.

Donna L. says, “Scientists usually refer to hurricanes as cyclones and these were discussed not only in Kevin Trenberth’s chapter but in a dozen others as well. The reason for this is straightforward: even though hurricane experts say there’s no evidence that global warming will make cyclones worse, IPCC personnel nevertheless believe this will be the case. Why? Because climate models say so. “

“Climate models are a collection of assumptions and educated guesses about how the real world behaves. If you’re thinking that this kind of circular logic is almost as scary as a cyclone, you’re not alone. IPCC personnel believe cyclones will intensify because models programmed by people who believe they’ll intensify tell them so.”

Robin Guiner:
I largely agree with you. Claims that the Y2K problem was a scare story have annoyed me for a long time. One thing your critics here miss is the problem of software systems that interface with other software systems, both local and remote. (You talk about it in your paper.)

Also there’s a blind spot in people who have only worked on PC’s (as opposed to mainframes).

Some of the faulty software was written before 1970, and some of it was hard to understand in those days, never mind 30-40 years later. In those days and later, it was not uncommon, in making a change to a program, not to try to understand the program, but to invent a way not to have to understand it. I can’t describe that briefly, so I’ll just say that the result was a change that made the program even harder to understand.

Oh and where is the troll R. Gates? Surely he can condescendingly explain to us simple people how none of the revelations by Donna Laframboise are relevant and that we shoudl just move along now, nothing to see!

The first scathing review of the book has appeared on Amazon. Nick Bowles calls Donna Lamframboise’s new book “junk”. Donna can expect a lot more attacks like this. I suspect that CAGW believers will be worried that some of their flock read the online preview or actually buy the book. Given that the new book is a fact filled compelling condemnation of the entire IPCC process this can not be good news for CAGW propagandists. The propagandists for CAGW will need to do everything in their power to prevent people reading this shocking expose on IPCC. Every open-minded reader of Donna’s book cannot help but walk away feeling something is terribly rotten in the state of the UNFCC and IPCC.

Jeremy says:
October 16, 2011 at 10:56 am
The first scathing review of the book has appeared on Amazon. Nick Bowles calls Donna Lamframboise’s new book “junk”.

Here’s my response to that critical review by Nick Bowles, which I posted on Amazon:

NB wrote, “The very fact that it is only published electronically …”

The climate-contrarian website WUWT, where this book is under discussion, contains this notice at the top of the thread: “A 250-page paperback edition priced at $20 should be available by the end of next week from Amazon.com – which ships internationally.”

NB: “I had a look and after a couple of minutes came across the argument that because economic models didn’t work climate models couldn’t work.”

That’s a strawman (a version of an opponent’s argument that is exaggerated or caricatured to facilitate easy dismissal). The book (in ch. 7, “Climate Modelers”) doesn’t say or imply “couldn’t work.” It argues, in nuanced terms, that climate modelers have an exaggerated belief in the trustworthiness of their models. Here’s her quote: “In the view of climate modelers, these computer simulations are as good as hard evidence.” She aims at undercutting this.

NB: “This is in the same bit where she trots out the old chestnut that because CO2 is a small percentage of the atmosphere doubling that percentage is irrelevant.” Another strawman. She doesn’t say irrelevant. She isn’t denying that increasing the CO2 level will lead to a (one-degree) rise in the global temperature. Here’s her quote: “All this fuss is based on a hypothesis that says our planet is so unstable a slight increase in one particular trace gas will trigger disaster.” IOW, her thrust is (implicitly) against the positive feedbacks incorporated in climate models (and paucity of negative feedbacks) that greatly magnify this increase.

Incidentally, I just added the following first sentence (not yet vetted by Amazon) to my review: “The author has written the UN’s scofflaw IPCC a dozen parking tickets (which will naturally be ignored).”

PS: The public’s dislike of UN members habit of ignoring parking tickets should have been capitalized on by titling the book, “Scofflaw: The Climatic Nonsensus of the UN’s IPCC.” This would also have given the book a handier (shorter) “handle.”

Interesting reading. I’m only on chapter 10 after downloading the Kindle edition this morning. I do find the tone and style a bit too journalistic, rapid fire, with rather quick leaps that some not educated on the subject might find confusing. I will though withhold judgement until I’m finished reading the whole thing. That said, the most important point about this work seems to be the amount of research that went into taking down names of the players and exposing the lack of diligence at the UN’s IPCC.

There appears to be a battle playing out between reviewers on Amazon. A certain Peter Gleick (apparently of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California) has thrown down the gauntlet to all skeptics out there by calling Donna’s book “junk”!!!

There appears to be a battle playing out between reviewers on Amazon. A certain Peter Gleick (apparently of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California) has thrown down the gauntlet to all skeptics out there by calling Donna’s book “junk”!!!

I’ve replied at length to the three one-star reviewers. They seem as alike as peas-from-a-pod: Raving overstatements, vitriolic sneers, factual inaccuracy, deceptiveness (although they’re likely so blinded by faith they don’t recognize the distortions they’re uttering), paucity of specifics, etc. I haven’t visited warmist sites in the past year, so I was taken aback.

Brian H, I was taught that “the use of BC and AD for numbering calendar years was invented by Dionysius Exiguus in 525 AD”. “Dionysius named the years relating to his cycle, BC meaning Before Christ which starts with year 1 and AD meaning Anno Domini, the year of Our Lord referring to the year of Christ’s birth. This is also year 1. There is no year 0.” (Quotations from http://agards-bible-timeline.com/q4_ad_bc_ce.html, the accuracy of which I cannot vouch for though people more learned than I have maintained a similar line.)

A few facts for conspriracy theorists to dwell on (from Wiki site on IPCC) – not that I expect it will dampen your fervour!:

Various scientific bodies have issued official statements endorsing and concurring with the findings of the IPCC.

Joint science academies’ statement-2001
The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world’s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus.[109]

Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
We concur with the climate science assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 … We endorse the conclusions of the IPCC assessment…[110]

Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
CMOS endorses the process of periodic climate science assessment carried out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and supports the conclusion, in its Third Assessment Report, which states that the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.[111]

European Geosciences Union
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…is the main representative of the global scientific community….IPCC third assessment report…represents the state-of-the-art of climate science supported by the major science academies around the world and by the vast majority of scientific researchers and investigations as documented by the peer-reviewed scientific literature.[112]

International Council for Science
…the IPCC 4th Assessment Report represents the most comprehensive international scientific assessment ever conducted. This assessment reflects the current collective knowledge on the climate system, its evolution to date, and its anticipated future development.[113]

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (US)
Internationally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)… is the most senior and authoritative body providing scientific advice to global policy makers.[114]
National Research Council (US)
The IPCC’s conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue.[115]

Network of African Science Academies
The IPCC should be congratulated for the contribution it has made to public understanding of the nexus that exists between energy, climate and sustainability.[116]

Royal Meteorological Society
In response to the release of the Fourth Assessment Report, the Royal Meteorological Society referred to the IPCC as “The world’s best climate scientists”.[117]

Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London
The most authoritative assessment of climate change in the near future is provided by the Inter-Governmental Panel for Climate Change.[118]

Do you even think about what you write when you introduce a cut-and-paste post with a bullying insult to people’s intelligence? Really do you think that we are all idiots and your brow-beating will silence us? Or are you so stupid as to imagine that you can influence people by insulting them?

And finally, those who have the gall to accuse doubters of ‘being in cahoots with big oil’ show unbounded stupidity to call their critics ‘conspiracy theorists’.

Hi everyone, I’ve just started following and it feels like I’ve come home. Phew!

The reason I checked in here was because my little blog, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, recently got monstered – is the only way I can put it – by the very born again, save the world types Donna Laframboisse appears to be talking about. In fact, given the choice between Jehovah Witnesses at my door, and these types, I would prefer the JWs.

So anyway, I made the mistake of leaving a comment and saying that they would be welcome to come over and comment if they felt that I’d got anything wrong. I thought I might learn something new. Well, wow! I thought that just one or two would come over and make some reasonable points. But no! I spent the whole of Saturday and half of Sunday trying to deal with all their comments, and when I got the point of being unable to publish all of them, because there were just too many for me to digest and reply to, some of them cut up really nasty and started attacking my character. So in the end I had to close the comments down.

So that’s why it’s a real weight off even just to be here. I was beginning to think that maybe there really was something wrong with me and that it is partly my fault the whole world is going to hell in a handcart. It was very difficult for me to refute what they said because I’m not a scientist, but it was that just that there was something about what they were staying that stank of shortsightedness, lack of vision and a huge agenda! I felt like they didn’t have enough vision to understand that the planet has gone through warming and cooling cycles for 400,000 years at least, so how could me buying low energy lightbulbs make the slightest difference to the arrival of the next warming period?

In the end, I had to close down the Comments on the post, something I’ve never had to do before on my blog. But if any of you more reasonably-minded people would like to come over and leave some more realistic comments, I will open it up again because it would just be good to have the other side of the argument reflected there. Balance, in other words!

I have now deleted all their comments after discovering that one of the commenters on Tamino’s blog had said that wanted to hit me, twice, and another was recommending that they all come over to my blog to “goad her, to see just how batshiite, tinfoil-body-armor crazy we can get her? I mean, think of the entertainment potential…”

I’ve asked Tamino to remove both of those comments as I think this is just naked bullying and aggression and that threatening violence is really beyond pale.

………. I’m only on chapter 10 after downloading the Kindle edition this morning. I do find the tone and style a bit too journalistic, rapid fire, with rather quick leaps that some not educated on the subject might find confusing………..”

I finished the book and I was wrong in my initial assessment. The reason for the rapid fire style is the vast amounts of information the author is presenting – no space for “fill” prose. The “quick leaps” all get resolved in the following chapters. A brilliant piece of work! One of a kind. The book is NOT about climate science. It is about the POLITICS of climate science and the IPCC politicians.

After reading the book I have one thing to say to climate activists and activist scientists:

You activists all might like to think that you have been steering the climate boat and you are wrong. You have been played; and played by some of the best in the business – the career politicians of the UN (World). Embarrassing….

Anthony, you should bring up this book again with another post at the top of the blog so the people that have read it can post their “after the read” comments. I think this book is that important.

Great read!
Years ago, one of my first skeptical arguments against AGW was that if the group responsible for the “science” were named Intercorporational Panel on Climate Change would they receive the same positive attention?
The answer of course is obviously no. Especially in light of how “skeptical” scientists and researchers are treated by being unfairly tied (often without proof or citations) to “big oil”.

My main statement is the book focuses too much on the people involved whereas the IPCC is more fundamentally flawed-
(1) Its mission was scientifically worthless- review scientific paper no progress in that. Something a scientific literarature reviewer could do (a few thousand of them).
(2) A malstructured bucreacracy ().
(2-1) Malstructured in that each chapter is written by one person with little comeback and many other ways.
(2-2) as though a bucreacracy is anyway near suitable for scientific investigation except for the admin
(3) And it doesn’t follow it own rules which is totally nonbucreacratic (unfortunately a quality of most government bucreacracies)

Not to say it doesn’t cover those issues but without enough emphasis as (2-1) and (3) could overcome the natural biases of the individuals involved.

Also the book doesn’t say what the IPCC should have been or give organisation/investigations as comparisons.